Passing the Point of No Return
by LosingInTranslation
Summary: Sara’s thoughts as she starts to feel her control crumbling around her. Post Ep for No Humans Involved & Nesting Dolls. Foundations of GSR
1. Chapter 1

**DISCLAIMER:** Don't own anything associated with the show… I just like playing with the characters in it now and then. Dance, Monkeys! Dance!

**RATING:** T for Teen.

**PAIRINGS:** Some of the foundations for GSR

**SPOILERS:** Post Ep for Season 5 Episodes "No Humans Involved" & "Nesting Dolls"

**SUMMARY:** Sara's thoughts as she starts to feel her control crumbling around her.

**A/N:** Okay, so I was trying to work through a writer's block, and I just happened to be making my way through Season 5 disks last night in an attempt to also fight the insomnia. Watching those episodes, it really struck me that Sara had to have been dealing with an awful lot of stuff outside of what they were showing onscreen. Here's a little bit of what I think she had going on in her mind.

* * *

Sara watched as the deputies led the unconscionable woman down the hall in cuffs, while Brass explained about the mother being found in Seattle. She tried to pay attention to what the man was saying, but her heart and her mind were in another time and place. Somewhere she never thought she would be again, somewhere she never wanted to be again. 

As he finished talking Sara looked at Brass and asked, "Where are you going to take her first, the hospital or the morgue?"

With a deep sigh, he answered, "Guess I might as well get it over with. I mean, once she sees the kids, she's not going to want to leave them." He shrugged with the weight of the decision and asked, "What do you think?

With an almost wistful expression on her face, Sara told him. "Go with the living, Jim. The dead can wait." She turned and walked away, hopeful that he would not follow. She wasn't sure she could handle talking any longer without spilling her guts. Instead, she got in her car and drove back to the lab.

In her experience thus far, no one needed that kind of headache, if they weren't getting paid for it. She had spoken briefly to her counselor about a few of her fears, but they had yet to get to the real demons in her life. She thought she would have the chance to discuss them all before she had to face them. As she worked the case, she found out how wrong she was when one of those demons had come out to find her.

She had seen so much of herself in that girl in reception, the girl who'd already spent so much of her life in foster care, so much more than Sara ever had. She wanted to reach out and tell her not to be so tough, not to shut herself off from the world, but deep down, she knew it would be wrong. She would the biggest hypocrite around if she told her that, not while she was doing the same thing.

Sara had always been tough, even when she wasn't. She made sure everyone knew how tough she was, and she hated anything that betrayed that illusion, even for a second. No, Sara did everything in her power to never betray what was really deep down inside. While everything around her was neat and orderly and controlled, inside she was a whirling mass of confusion and despair and total chaos.

The chaos stayed at bay, for the most part. Sometimes it would get away from her before she even knew what was happening. One such instance was why she had started the counseling in the first place. Another such instance was what had set her on the path she was following now.

Control has always been the focus of her adult life, because she had so little of it growing up. The fights and the screaming and chaos surrounded her every waking moment in childhood. In adolescence, it was the uncertainty, the chaos of never knowing what was coming next, that ruled her life. So, when she finally had a chance to control her life, she grabbed it with both hands and held on for dear life. Since that time there were only two things that set her off and made her lose control; violence against women and children and Grissom.

The one gave her a sense of vengeance, a sense of justice, for all of those people she couldn't help, for all those people who still cried out, but were never heard. For herself, for her mother. But, instead of giving her peace, each case brought the pain of her past closer and closer to the surface. Each case made her relive the horror again, and again. And each case let her grip on that control grow weaker and weaker. She feared that one day, she would snap altogether, and there would be no more turning back. That fear was what had prompted her to continue the counseling, long after her required sessions.

However, it was her other trigger that seemed to be weakening its hold on her heart. At one point, even being near him was enough for her to slip those tight reigns of control, but that had changed along the way. While she was certain she would never lose the feelings she held for him, she no longer sought out that rush she received by throwing caution to the wind when it came to him. With him, she almost felt like she didn't need to have the control, that it would be okay to let him hold the reigns. He was the only one she had ever thought like that about, but something had changed. Over time, he had shown her again and again that he was either not willing, or he was unable to handle the responsibility she was willing to give him. It had been a bitter pill to swallow, and an even harder dream to give up, but she was trying her best to put those thoughts behind her.

When she arrived back at the lab, Sara found the place to be oddly quiet, yet still alive. Their cases were solved, and everyone had finally gotten a moment to breathe after the tumult of the last week. The team had been broken up, Catherine promoted, Sofia demoted; chaos seemed to be what Conrad Ecklie was all about. No wonder she didn't like the slimy bastard, he stood for everything she had spent a lifetime fighting against.

As Sara sat down in the Processing Room, she opened up her laptop computer and turned to look around. She immediately found Grissom in his office looking through a book. But then her focus was drawn to Sofia as she sat on the edge of his desk and engaged Grissom in a friendly conversation. He smiled as he closed the book and then placed it in her outstretched hand. She wondered what he was reading, or what they were talking about, but ultimately it really didn't matter any more. She cared enough about Grissom to wish him happiness in whatever he did, so why would that be any different, just because it seemed as though he was happy with someone else.

She turned again and found the guys hamming it up in the Break Room over a bag of popcorn. She missed being a part of that whole thing, but it was just as much her fault as it was anyone else's. She had withdrawn from a lot of things to protect her control, because the best way to do that was to never let anyone in too far. What they don't know can't hurt you.

Sara watched as Catherine walked into the hallway and stopped when she saw the guys in the break room. Catherine smiled wistfully and sighed, and Sara thought for sure there was a look of pride on the older woman's face. She also thought that she had every right to be proud, Catherine had a hand in building the careers of each of those men, and she should be proud of that accomplishment.

For a moment, Sara entertained the notion that Catherine had seen her, sitting apart from the others, but instead she just glanced at her wristwatch, turned and headed back the way she had come.

Sara thought again about the events of the case, of the three boys making it out of the system, only to end up dead or near it, because of a bad decision their mother had made. Apparently lots of mothers made bad decisions. Or, so she thought, because she never really knew for sure. It had all happened so long ago, when Sara was still just a girl, and there, in front of her, on that laptop, she had the key that would answer all of those questions for her. She only had to find the courage to finally face the demon and see it for what it really was. She only had to type in those words she had memorized so long ago.

She took one last look around at the people that now filled her life, closed her eyes and then looked back at her laptop. There on the screen, she had already pulled up the database site; LexisNexis was beckoning to her with that flashing cursor in the search field. She had already navigated to the Federal and State Court Cases directory, and all she had left to do was to type those remembered words. The words that had ruled her life, the words that had marked her forever…

THE PEOPLE VS. LAURA SIDLE W/2

MODESTO, CALIFORNIA, 1984.

It wasn't much, but it was the only thing she had ever known.


	2. Chapter 2

**DISCLAIMER:** Don't own anything associated with the show… I just like playing with the characters in it now and then. Dance, Monkeys! Dance!

**RATING:** T for Teen.

**PAIRINGS:** GSR

**SPOILERS:** Post Ep for Season 5 Episodes "No Humans Involved" & "Nesting Dolls"

**SUMMARY:** Sara's thoughts as she starts to feel her control crumbling around her.

**A/N:** Here's the conclusion to this little story… Hope you enjoyed it!

* * *

It finally happened. She finally snapped. Sara knew it was building to that, knew that she was getting close to the edge, but she just couldn't stop herself, no matter how hard she tried. She knew what it was, and she should have stepped back and let someone else handle it. She should have told Grissom she needed to step back, but she hadn't been able to talk to him for a while, they barely even existed in the same space anymore.

Looking through those medical records of all of those domestic abuse victims had done it. They looked far too much like the ones she had found of her mother's. In every face, she saw her mother's staring back at her, with those desperate eyes boring into her heart. And in her mother's face, she shivered at the reflection of herself coming from those images. Each folder brought her closer and closer to the edge, farther and farther from being able to hold on to her control. It was all slipping away, and she needed to do something to hold it all in. What she did was wrong, wrong on so many levels.

First, she totally lost it with that suspect. Sara had no idea where any of that came from, but it had obviously been boiling for a long time, because even after Melton walked out, she still had some steam left in that engine. Why she thought Catherine would be willing to keep that fire stoked, she'd never know. And she'd never know why she then turned on her the moment she realized Catherine was standing her down. But even worse than that, she'd never be able to forgive herself for what was said, or the way it was said.

She and Catherine may have never been the best of friends, but Sara had always admired her for the accomplishments she'd gained, even in the face of terrible odds. The realization that she was also harboring some resentment towards her for all the same things that she admired in her had never entered Sara's mind. Catherine had been able to walk that fine line of being a woman in a man's world, and yet still maintaining her femininity. Sara had always felt like a failure in that department.

But her greatest blunder of the day came from her interaction with Ecklie. She was still flaming mad and nothing was going to be accomplished by Ecklie talking to her at that moment. However, it was obvious the man couldn't take the clue. He practically shoved her into his office and began to go after her immediately, but she wasn't having any of it. Sara was getting angrier, and instead of blowing out the steam, she just seemed to be building up pressure. The final straw came when he gave her one of those "my lab" tirades and she just went off. Told him exactly what she thought of it being _his lab_, and then proceeded to tell him what she thought of him as well.

By the time Sara was done, she knew that was exactly what she was: done. The only thing she had left to do was wait for the paperwork to go through.

When she got home, she started to feel like the walls were closing in on her. She tried to calm herself down with everything in her arsenal. Her therapy thus far had been all about diverting her energies, and finding better outlets for the anger and pain. They hadn't gotten to the pain yet; to the demons that haunted her every waking and sleeping thought. She hadn't been ready to give over that power to her counselor yet, it was the only thing she had left that was all her own, and it was her only source of control. She could still control who she told about her past, about her worst demons.

When all the exercises she could remember failed, she started to stalk the floors of her apartment like a caged animal. She could feel the chaos threatening to overtake her completely, and the only thing she could think of was that the counselor had given her an emergency number after their last session. It had become obvious to her that Sara was holding something back, and she was just as afraid as Sara that it would all come down on her in a wholly uncontrolled rush. She rifled through her bag to find the number.

After a few calming breaths, the counselor had told Sara to find a safe spot in her apartment, get something to drink, turn on some music and write. Write down everything she was feeling, everything that she was thinking and then read it back to herself. She told Sara to analyze her own thoughts, just as she would any other evidence, and try to make the evidence talk to her. She needed to let the evidence speak for the part of Sara that could not speak for itself. Sara could relate to that, after all, it was her job.

And so, Sara got a beer from the fridge, clicked on the stereo and sat down at her simple desk in the corner of her living room. She took out a pen and some paper and started to write.

Sara wrote about the fighting, about the fear, about the abuse, about the pain, about the loss, about the isolation, about the longing, about the-… She stopped before she got to the last thing, and read back to herself what she had written. She wasn't quite ready to write about that last thing just yet, so she decided to process the evidence she had so far. What she saw told her what she already knew, but had been afraid to see: Sara was losing her control.

She read through it one more time as she thought about all of the things in her life that had led her to his moment. To the moment when she had gone so far as to throw it all away, without once really trying to fix the mess in her life.

Taking in a deep breath, and then blowing it out, Sara knew she needed to deal with…that night. She had pen to paper and was about to start writing when…

…Someone knocked on the door. Using the remote, she turned the stereo off and the gentle background music was quieted. She carried her beer with her as she crossed the room to answer the door. She had a pretty good idea who was on the other side of that door, and her suspicions were confirmed when she looked through the peephole.

She opened the door and found Grissom standing outside her front door. Sara sighed, and lowered her gaze for just a moment. "Well, if you're here, it can't be good."

Grissom looked as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, but all Sara could think was that he should have tried her load for a little while.

He looked into her eyes, and she felt like something had just cracked through her shell. She had been preparing to fall apart, so his arrival frightened her to the core, and not just because of what his arrival signified, but because she was afraid of what his proximity meant to her fragile state of mind. She could deal with losing her career, but wasn't sure she could handle losing her control, and subsequently him, should he finally see inside that carefully crafted façade barely containing the chaos and keeping the demons at bay.

And then he asked the words that Sara was certain would haunt her for the rest of her days. "Can I come in?"


End file.
